48 replies to this topic

[bart]

Cristian, please consider that phrase in the context in which I wrote it..  The complete sentence reads like this:  

Quote

To me, it's equally -- in my feeling, MORE -- important to retain a living sense of what 20th-century  "neoclassicism" was and is, and how it revitalized and possibly saved a dying art form.

I was talking about Balanchine's development of neoclassiscism, something which began as long ago as the late 1920s.  I was NOT talking about what might happen at some point in the future, as your reference to Jennifer Homans' book implies.

I can't think of anyone who would disagree with the idea that classical ballet in the 1920s and for a long time afterwards was in a very bad way in western Europe, almost non-existent in the Americas, and surviving precariously in the Soviet Union.   This decline had definitely been turned around by the 1970s in most of the  western world.  My point was that Balanchine's neoclassicism -- which honored his love of classical ballet while refusing to be satisfied with merely repeating it -- was one of those factors responsible for that revival.  Is this really controversial?

[cubanmiamiboy]

bart, on 08 December 2012 - 06:40 PM, said:

Cristian, please consider that phrase in the context in which I wrote it..  The complete sentence reads like this:  

Quote

To me, it's equally -- in my feeling, MORE -- important to retain a living sense of what 20th-century  "neoclassicism" was and is, and how it revitalized and possibly saved a dying art form.

I was talking about Balanchine's development of neoclassiscism, something which began as long ago as the late 1920s.  I was NOT talking about what might happen at some point in the future, as your reference to Jennifer Homans' book implies.

I was joking, bart...  It is perhaps that the whole "dying" scenario has been repeated and predicted for so long by so many that we-( I )- can get a little defensive-(let's watch the "dying" corpse as much as there's still some life within it!)-that I actually and definitely tend to oversee Mr. B's unique contribution to such work, which still even after his own death, keeps inflicting life into our venerated art form.  But you know me by now, right...?

[Quiggin]

I wanted to add this comment by Mary Ellen Moylan from I Remember Balanchine about the demands of the role in Ballet Imperial.

Quote

I don't think I have ever danced a more difficult ballet in my entire career than Ballet Imperial. One of the reasons was because the very first entrance onstage is to a piano solo. It requires turns on a dime and stop, and great control and speed. There is no preparatory warm-up with the audience. You come bursting in, and you don't have a way to meet your public.

She was also doing Balanchine's Rosalinda in which José Limón was her partner. "After the performance of Ballet Imperial I put on my cloak, left my makeup on, and tore down in a taxi to Forty-fourth Street Theater to appear in the second act of Rosalinda."

Moylan followed Marie-Jean in the role. "She was spectacular. I thought she was just it – perfect. I adored her. Talk about role models – to me she was the perfect ideal of Balanchine."

[Helene]

Thank you for the Moylan quotes, Quiggin!